


just a little mathematics

by fated_addiction



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-23
Updated: 2013-11-23
Packaged: 2018-01-02 11:00:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1055989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fated_addiction/pseuds/fated_addiction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before Henry, and after Henry. And everything in between.</p>
            </blockquote>





	just a little mathematics

**Author's Note:**

> All spoilers up to and including _Think Lovely Thoughts_.

This still isn't a sleepy, little town in Maine, or the high, off-putting skyline of Boston. Emma is _sweating_ and nearly halfway into peeling off the rest of her tank, given that a magical jungle is still, very much a jungle with humidity and sub-Saharan temperatures.

“Please shut up,” she sighs, sitting against a tree. It's to Neal _and_ Hook; the two of them shoot looks, half-hearted and lazy to each other though. Blame is blame, and it just annoys the hell out of her all over again.

Hook sits closer, but not too close. Neal picks a tree across from her. The branches are bent and shade him. She barely meets his gaze and picks a spot above his head. It's not that she _can't_ look at him, or won't, or maybe it's a little bit of both. It's just that the idea of acceptance lords over her like some kind of vindication and she doesn't want him to have it because she's angry and she's sad and she's so, totally used to the idea of him not being here that she wonders if she's going to be okay all over again.

“Coconut?”

Hook moves a little closer. His legs spread out in the dirt. Neal watches; Emma glues her gaze to Hook's hands. His knuckles are bruised. Dirt sticks to the inside and his palms, right into his fingernails. He still brings the knife down without any sort of hesitation. It splits and cracks, snapping into clumsy halves.

“Eat,” he says.

“I like red meat,” she grumbles, and Neal snorts over them. She shoots him a look. She eats the coconut anyway because it's not like she's ever going to eat them again after this.

“M'behaving,” Hook murmurs. “Generously so, I might add. I'm not clocking him over the head with some sort of inanimate object –”

Emma's eyes narrow at Neal when his mouth opens. “Don't even,” she warns.

He holds his hands up.

“ – and,” Hook continues, “I'm rather fond of clocking blokes with inanimate objects, giving the ol' arm a warm-up –”

“Where are you _even_ going with this?” Emma snaps.

And then he's looking at her, just like _that_ , eyes narrowed, half-pensive, more full of secrets. It makes her uncomfortable, twitch in that spot, the long line of wood digging into her back, fabric, and skin, as if it were meant to be nothing more than a reassurance that she's still human, that she's still _Emma_. But he still looks and she feels herself peeling back, bit by bit. Then it stops. Then she remembers Neal and Neverland and Henry, somewhere close.

Emma nearly drops the rest of the coconut. 

“Nowhere,” Hook says. “Nowhere at all, lass.”

 

 

 

David and Mary Margaret have made up again, or again- _again_ because Hook seems ready to roll his eyes so hard to disappear in the back of his head and David is watching Neal, dark eyes and a thin line for a mouth because now's the time to play dad, apparently.

She sits away from the group, half-aware of the conversation, eyeing the coconut shell and Tinker Bell and Neal all in the same shot. She feels uneasy. She knows it's not because it's Neal and it's Tinker Bell and it's an entirely different playing field that maybe, maybe if this were different, she would be angry and hopeless. But she thinks of irreconcible anger and displacement and feels that ugly, hard pull of knowing that Henry's close, that Pan will hold that over her head as long as they're here and it's her burden to bear in the middle of this.

“It's a terrible thing, patience.”

Her mouth twitches. She _hears_ Hook. He leans against the wall and the odd combination of wood and paper catch against his jacket.

“He's a little shit,” she mutters, and Hook laughs. She tilts her head up, meeting his gaze lazily. She studies him carefully and then shakes her head. “I'm fine,” she murmurs. “You don't have to hover.”

“I'm not hovering, love.”

“Then?”

He shrugs. “More like being carefully aware of my place,” he says dryly. “It's terribly charming, you know, when you look like you're going to bite.”

“I hate you.” Her eyes roll.

It's then that he sits with her. Emma ignores Neal's look, then Mary Margaret's, and picks a spot on the floor that's suddenly over his legs. He's completely in her space, even without touching her; he's limbs and hands and just a strange, sharp curtain from the small group that's trying _not_ to watch them. She's tired and she doesn't remember the last time that she's ever this time, even if it did matter. All she think about is Henry and the stupid choices this could lead to. She's learned her son up until this point. She also knows what it's like to think with a heart.

There is nothing to like about Neverland, not even the lush, almost eerie, endless scenes of green and _green_ that it opens up into. She gets the sea and the sky and the homage to ever childlike dream and nightmare she's always had. If she knows her son – and at this point, she'd like to start accepting that she knows Henry just as much as Regina and everyone else that's been in his life before her, or after her. She knows she'd do something stupid herself.

“All right?”

Her mouth twists. “You know the answer.”

“It's much too – well, don't get too quiet, yeah?” Hook says. In the dirt, his fingers touch her knuckles. She doesn't think about the mistake. “The plan's the plan.”

“Are you worried?” she murmurs.

He meets her gaze. “You are.”

Her smile is faint and she doesn't saying anything. Maybe because she can't. Maybe because he already knows. And if he already knows, it should make her uncomfortable, distinctly uncomfortable, but there's nothing to it. She is distinctly aware of him, him here, him there, him outside of the group. She can't say it's nothing more than that.

“Stick to the plan,” she tells him, and she can only mean it that way.

 

 

 

They part like they are supposed to. Regina sticks close to her on the way to Skull Rock and honestly, all Emma can think about is how much she hates goddamn _Disney_ because there needs to be someone to blame. Hook grabs her though, just after David and Mary Margaret disappear into foliage and kiss her goodbye, just like parents are supposed to do. She really doesn't know how she feels.

There's a touch to her wrist, the inside of her wrist, and she does't know how to react – there's a reassurance, and then there's none, because she's wide-eyed, and Tinker Bell is at his side, knowing and desperate because a plan's a plan and this isn't about any of them; this is about Henry and this is about Pan and this is about getting the hell out of here.

“Don't be headstrong,” he murmurs.

His mouth is hot against her ear and she's bewidered and can do nothing but swear that he lingers.

“I won't,” she tries.

He chuckles and the sound is low, too low, and he's close enough to be too close. It's like this. When no one is looking – when _no one is looking_ – his hand is on her hip, his mouth is at her ear and he breathes, just breathes, because a plan is just a plan and anything more than a plan is more than she can and will admit. His hand is on her hip and space doesn't matter because with him, ironically or not, it's never, ever even crossed her mine.

“Be safe,” he says and that's that.

Regina stares at her the entire way to Skull Rock. Neal is a second. That hasn't matter for even longer.

This is where she is.

 

 

 

Then Henry is dead.

There is no transition for this. Her son's head is in her lap and then suddenly Neal is carrying him, out of Skull Rock as Regina says something and she completely shuts down. She wants to scream. She wants to yell. She wants to break _everything_ ; Gold is nowhere to be seen and she can't even begin to thinking about that, and what's going on with that.

It takes an hour though, leaving Skull Rock for land, then another for land and the Jolly Roger and David and Mary Margaret on the way. No one dares to say anything to her. They linger around Regina because suddenly, strangely, it's safer to linger around Regina and watch her all the same. It's a little bit of this and a little bit of that and Neverland feels completely and utterly different, more than just dangerous, but dangerous all the same.

After, resting Henry in a cabin, after Neal and Regina disappear – he finds her somewhere near the carrier cells, or prison, sitting and staring at the mix of steal and wood and not knowing what to do.

“I knew he was going to do it.”

He scoffs.

She ignores him. “But I did,” she says. “I had this weird, stupid feeling – he's my kid, you know, he got that from me. If this were another day, I would be just as stupid. I would have been just as _selfless_.”

“It wasn't your fault.”

Her mouth twists.

“Don't patronize me.”

“I'm not,” he shrugs. “If I were patronizing you, you would know and I wouldn't be terribly good at it.”

“That's reassuring.”

He shrugs. “I told you I was charming.”

They're quiet and she hates the deck, if only because the space if open and there is the sea and the noise, and she feels the salt and air brushing along her throat, just as it starts to tighten again. She isn't going to cry. She won't cry. She can't cry because all she sees is Henry, Henry in her head looking back at them so earnestly. _I have to do this_. Every kid wants to be the hero.

It's then that she realizes her hands are shaking. The moon is heavy and almost mocks her. Pan had no shadow, and it wasn't enough, the crash course she's had in all of this. This can't be it, she keeps telling herself, but then again, she's always been stuck in some sort of sharp, fantastical reality.

“My son is dead.”

The words are dry. Her hands fall onto the railing; David and Mary Margaret are due and she knows, with no need or sense of direction. They won't leave. They can't leave; they come in a pair and of course, there's no room for that either. She has no energy to think about what's meant to happen next.

“He's my son,” she repeasts, “and it's finally sinking in, you know, that I can call him my son without flinching or feeling guilty, that some strange part of me is proud that he could be selfless and idealistic, but then I am so _angry_ that this place just keeps taking more of me.”

Her words are stringing together and her hand turns and reaches, gripping the sleeve of his jacket. Her nails pick at the leather.

“The reality never makes sense, love,” he says quietly.

She shakes her head. “This isn't _mine_.”

Her eyes burn and his hand is on her face, knuckles tilting against her jaw. They're smooth and cool and his eyes are too kind. He's not pitying her and she doesn't know how to respond.

“I should have said something different,” she murmurs. Her lashes are starting to feel wet. She can't go down there, she thinks. She can't see him stretched out like that all over again. “I should have said it isn't worth it, kid. Don't go and be a hero. You have to protect yourself. Make that mistake first. Be selfish.”

Hook shakes his head and presses his fingers under her hair, pushing it back. He keeps touching her, which seems strikingly more intimate than needed. A part of her is desperate for the distraction. She can't look at Neal and think of Henry, or Gold, or any of those stupid, ridiculous promises and hope she's suddenly had. She can't even think about trust.

“You can't blame yourself.”

His fingers slide over her mouth. They're softer then her lips. She feels dry and tight and can still taste the salt. His other hand drops to her hip.

“It's not what you want to hear, and I'm the last person who should hash out any advice of that particular nature. I say you kill the bloody bastard, if anything but. We'll just have to figure out how to do and –”

She meets his gaze and he sighs, this soft, little laugh.

“I know you,” he says through the hesitation. “You won't leave until … you'll find some sort of solution.”

“With magic?” Her voice is sharp. “Is it even supposed to be that cruel? I know – I _think_ – I don't – magic seems to be the sorce of all of this, I just – I can't go down there and look at him and wonder what I could've done differently, what I want to do differently. I don't know this place. I don't know how to be _here_. I don't know how to even begin.”

There's no energy in her to push back, but her hands rise and rest against his chest, as if she were going to push back. It creates a little distance, a little reassurance, but he's still the one that seems to be the closest her, whether she wants it or not.

“And believe me, I want to kill Pan, Neverland or not. My son is my son and he's the source of _all_ of this – and Gold,” she snaps, “ _Gold_ – I can't even wrap my head around –” she stops herself again. “I can't go down there.”

“You don't have to.”

She rubs her eyes. “You're placating me again, you ass.”

It's half-hearted and he chuckles.

“I'm not,” he murmurs. “And I know you're about to go on, rambling about how terrible of a mother you are because you're not and I'm certainly not going to go about telling you how to feel because I'm honestly not in that place and I'm certain that you'd feed me to the mermaids and dear ol' dad would be more than happy to come up and help. I'm good with being here. Just, you know, if you're going to go and hit me – aim for the arms and the knees, maybe?”

“The knees?” her breath catches and she chokes on a laugh. “Seriously?”

And then it's the most geniune thing anyone has said to her since they've come back from Skull Rock, away from Henry and Neal and Pan and his clear, strange desire for immortality in exchange for her son's life. Emma starts to laugh again and then again, her head dropping against his chest as she takes fistfuls of his jacket and she can sort of, maybe feel his hands slide into her hair. He's right. He's here and just here, no attachments and needs and for some reason, some _bizarre_ reason, it clears her head more than anything else.

It's then she realizes that she's crying, that it comes and hits her slowly, silently even with a burn in her throat and tears sticking to her cheeks. It's the show, she rationalizes. It takes step by step to hit. One, process the grief. Two, unsettle yourself. Three – She feels so stupid for crying. It's a part of her that she doesn't want or need. She has never been that person and vulenrability is something that deeply unsettles her. She can see Henry in her head, his earnest, full desperation – _it's the right thing to do_ – and she can't even begin to think how she could have protected him from that.

Henry is dead and Hook still holds her close, fingers in her hair.

It could have been a kiss.

 

 

 

 

She dreams. This is grief.

In the morning, the realizations are the same and her head lifts from Hook's shoulder. The salt sticks to her skin and his eyes are closed. She doesn't remember going from standing to sitting, him touching her, to her staying close; her head is heavier than heart and she can feel Neverland start to crawl into her skin, and the darkest reminder is that everything is true.

She thinks of Henry and her mouth is tight. Hook makes a soft sound from behind her. He'll be up in a bit, she remembers. He's an even lighter sleeper than she is.

She tries saying it though. “Think lovely thoughts.”

There is no echo.


End file.
